Heroic Five Mans in Cata.........Spot on

[BreathTaker]

No one wants to spend 3 hours in a dungeon.

I do. I don't want to spend 6 hours there with lazy idiots, but 3 hours with fine players is bliss

[Oncereborn]

CM are nothing like TBC heroics. TBC heroics you had to watch pats, CC, be careful of the mobs' CC (fear, etc), and mobs running away/pulling other mobs. CM you just zerg through and AoE everything.

In BC once your had gear your could do the same thing, or did you not actually ever play in TBC?

---------- Post added 2013-06-24 at 07:52 PM ----------

Which does not change the fact that dungeons in general in WoW are jokes compared to a lot of other games. I usually try a lot of new MMOs, try them out. Tried out Aion, rift, dragon nest, global agenda, neverwinter, raiderz etc, and I cant think of any of them that had such easy dungeons as WoW have. While leveling you can solo level appropriate 5 man instances easier than the special "solo instances" in Global Agenda.

Dungeons are supposed to be a stepping stone, a training grounds, basic gearing up and basic challenges, challenging enough to help you teach the basics of your class and the game. Something that I do not really think WoW had since the ZA/ZG instances.




This was true in Cata much more than in wrath. Entry level cata heroics offered a much faster gearing up process than entry level WotLK heroics. The difference though was that naxxramas was not really a raid as much as it was a 10/25 player dungeon.
If you go further into the expansion, you did not get any new dungeons when ulduar released, so dungeons did not get you raid ready at all here, you had to go through old raids.
When ToC released you got one 5 player dungeon, before FL you had ZA/ZG in cata. The difference here is that you could do ToC5HC one time a day and ZA/ZG you could spam with random queue, so you could gear up a lot faste rin ZA/ZG than in ToC5HC, same story in ICC with the ICC dungeons vs Cata End Time dungeons, you could only do the WotLK ones once, you could spam the Cata ones, making you gear up faster. In WotLK you also only got emblems once a day, in Cata you could spam justice points for easy gear up, there was no "soft cap" with justice as there was on emblems.

So really, Cata dungeons offered much better gearing up than WotLK dungeons

Now in MoP, it is exactly the same thing. I dinged a new tank alt in 5.2. After 2 days it was 485 ilvl, did entire ToT LFR, Nalak, Oondasta, Galleon and Sha of Fear and got 0 items, so was with very bad luck. With some luck it could easily have been 495-500 ilvl after 2 days. Easily raid ready for ToT after just a day or two.

Actually it was far faster to gear up in wrath than in cata or mop. In cata it would take ages to get raid ready on an alt compaired to in wrath. In wrath you could literally run heroics over an over for a couple of days and buy all the justice and valor gear and you would be easily geared enough for heroics, and you would nolonger need to run 5 mans as you would have already had all the gear.

In cata and again in mop all the gear is gated, you have a cap on how much points you can earn so you cant just get instantly geared straight away, which IMO is a very boring model as it forced players to take weeks or even months to get decked out in gear from justice/valor points.

This is all from personal experience BTW not from just reading some forums. Had a max level of each class in both wrath and in cata, all raid level geared and most of which also had equally geared offspecs. Also the process im referring to worked up until cata release (so when ICC was still current), because with each new tier in wrath, the justice/valor gear was upgraded.

[Deleted]

I'd prefer the TBC model of 2-3 hours of hard work and ACTUAL thought requirement to get a pretty nice reward in the form of the best loot you could get outside of raiding as well as cost-effective badges of justice (justice points, which in the current game are utterly worthless, so why even have them?)

tbc dungeons weren´t hard, people just sucked. sure for those people who were stuck the entire expansion in karazhan it seemed hard i guess but don´t tell me a full t5-t6grp needed 2-3hours of hard work for a lousy heroic dungeon.

[Aquamonkey]

In BC once your had gear your could do the same thing, or did you not actually ever play in TBC?

CM is equivalent to outgearing TBC heroics... except CM is normalized so you can't outgear it and it's always that easy, or did you not actually ever play CM?

[Deleted]

Actually it was far faster to gear up in wrath than in cata or mop. In cata it would take ages to get raid ready on an alt compaired to in wrath. In wrath you could literally run heroics over an over for a couple of days and buy all the justice and valor gear and you would be easily geared enough for heroics, and you would nolonger need to run 5 mans as you would have already had all the gear.

In cata and again in mop all the gear is gated, you have a cap on how much points you can earn so you cant just get instantly geared straight away, which IMO is a very boring model as it forced players to take weeks or even months to get decked out in gear from justice/valor points.

This is all from personal experience BTW not from just reading some forums. Had a max level of each class in both wrath and in cata, all raid level geared and most of which also had equally geared offspecs. Also the process im referring to worked up until cata release (so when ICC was still current), because with each new tier in wrath, the justice/valor gear was upgraded.

I did not say that gearing up in wrath was slower. Gearing up through dungeons was though. The difference was that in WotLK there was pugs going on for T7, T8, T9, T10 constantly, even in T10, so you could always gear up through the older tiers. Gearing up through dungeons was however faster in Cata, that is quite undeniable.

That said, gearing up in Cata was not slow. All my alts was usually raid ready 1-2 days after dinging 85 in cata. Not like it took months to become raid ready in Cata.


Edit: Also, you do realise there was no justice/valor gear in WotLK? There was emblems, and emblems had a maximum cap per week. That is the difference, Justice point had no cap, so you could grind full justice gear in 1 day if you wanted in Cata, you did not have that option in WotLK.

[Deleted]

I personal liked it more this way without any new dungeons i think on a new expansion there should be new
dungeons but after that i cant see the point in why blizz should use time on making them.

[Tekkommo]

I'd prefer the TBC model of 2-3 hours of hard work and ACTUAL thought requirement

I wouldn't really call it hard work and they didn't take 2-3 hours either. Sure they would take 3 hours with bad players, but in TBC I just did them with friends.

Actually I take that back, first time doing them it would take about 2 hours for some of them, as you had to work out patrols, boss mechanics and stuff. After the first time though, they were pretty quick. Again this is with friends, not idiots who are clueless you would find in trade/lfg channel.

You can't queue for heroic scenarios (even though they are easy), so why don't they introduce heroic elite mode 5 mans, where you can't queue for them, but have to make your group instead.

---------- Post added 2013-06-24 at 11:04 AM ----------

tbc dungeons weren´t hard, people just sucked. sure for those people who were stuck the entire expansion in karazhan it seemed hard i guess but don´t tell me a full t5-t6grp needed 2-3hours of hard work for a lousy heroic dungeon.

I don't know why you're referring the TBC heroics to groups in t5-t6 gear.

[Oncereborn]

I did not say that gearing up in wrath was slower. Gearing up through dungeons was though. The difference was that in WotLK there was pugs going on for T7, T8, T9, T10 constantly, even in T10, so you could always gear up through the older tiers. Gearing up through dungeons was however faster in Cata, that is quite undeniable.

That said, gearing up in Cata was not slow. All my alts was usually raid ready 1-2 days after dinging 85 in cata. Not like it took months to become raid ready in Cata.


Edit: Also, you do realise there was no justice/valor gear in WotLK? There was emblems, and emblems had a maximum cap per week. That is the difference, Justice point had no cap, so you could grind full justice gear in 1 day if you wanted in Cata, you did not have that option in WotLK.

You say gearing up wasn't slower, then in the next sentence you say it was????? And of course I know there wasn't JP/VP in wrath, but emblems were the EXACT same thing man, don't try and get technical on me that's petty.

I don't think you even remember early cata heroics, each one would take atleast 30 minutes and were actually quite difficult most of the time resulting in constant wipes unless you had a full premade. BTW yes I do remember how long it would take to gear up and how long it would take to do the runs, go armory me (same name as my forum name - server is Jubei'Thos), I had all the heroic achievements in the first week of cata.

[Aquamonkey]

You say gearing up wasn't slower, then in the next sentence you say it was????? And of course I know there wasn't JP/VP in wrath, but emblems were the EXACT same thing man, don't try and get technical on me that's petty.

I don't think you even remember early cata heroics, each one would take atleast 30 minutes and were actually quite difficult most of the time resulting in constant wipes unless you had a full premade. BTW yes I do remember how long it would take to gear up and how long it would take to do the runs, go armory me (same name at my forum name - server is Jubei'Thos), I had all the heroic achievements in the first week of cata.

He's saying that gearing up from only dungeons was slower in WotLK, but overall it was faster because of all the pugs running old tiers.

[Felarion]

Well imo. 5 mans at the lunch of cata was cool, but they were not desgined for bunch of casuals from lfd I mean 4.03/4.06 patch, as well as 4.1 when they add zul'aman zul'gurub.

[Deleted]

The word "Heroic" hasn't really applied since TBC. These days heroic dungeons are just for getting valor capped or to gear up in the first week of having a character. There's zero challenge, and practically zero meaningful rewards to be found in them.

I'd prefer the TBC model of 2-3 hours of hard work and ACTUAL thought requirement to get a pretty nice reward in the form of the best loot you could get outside of raiding as well as cost-effective badges of justice (justice points, which in the current game are utterly worthless, so why even have them?)

If you don't want to commit the time and energy needed to do HEROIC dungeons, which should actually be somewhat heroic in my opinion, you can stick to normal mode dungeons (which should be as hard as current heroics) and scenarios and LFR.

this is a significant problem with the currrent game in my opinion.


tl;dr : make HEROIC dungeons difficult, requiring thought and time, AND (this is also important) provide adequate reward for taking the time and energy to do these dungeons.

Absolutely this. I much prefer smaller group dynamics and dungeon content, and I really miss the epic dungeon crawls of TBC, tanking Shattered Halls Heroic as a Warrior was a true test of skill.

And before anyone says it... Challenge Modes are NOT the solution. A) they are too easy, and b) the whole time trial concept totally invalidates the concept. Heroic dungeons should take an hour+ easily, and they should feel worthwhile. Imo they are the perfect solution to the LFR issue. LFR has become a pretty important step in the gearing process for many people, but a lot of those people also really dislike LFR. So put in new 5 man heroics, that are actually heroic, and reward LFR ilvl gear as drops from the bosses.

I also think that dailies should not award valor. Dailies should award rep that unlocks decent items you can buy with gold. Valor should be like a "raid salary" that you get for doing current tier end game content, and you should be able to buy any item from the tier with it, imo. Terrible RNG (made worse by the LFR loot system of "failbags") is one of my biggest gripes with this game.

[MasterHamster]

These "spot" on dungeons were nothing but a PitA for the healer. All the WotLK players had long forgotten how to avoid any damage.
ZA/ZG for those who no longer needed gear from 4.0, so much variance
HoTs dungeons with so much RP that players fell asleep.

I'm so glad they aren't adding new dungeons mid-expansion anymore. So ******* boring to be reduced to 2-3 dungeons for months.

The thing here is that Burning Crusade had heroics that were hard for people in blues and at the same time for people in t6

lolno

[Deleted]

I'm playing on an all scripted TBC server and I've had more fun working my way up slowly then being raid raidy within 2 days.

And yes, I like doing a 1 hour Shadow Labs run...

[Nobleshield]

I'm playing on an all scripted TBC server and I've had more fun working my way up slowly then being raid raidy within 2 days.

And yes, I like doing a 1 hour Shadow Labs run...

Congratulations, you're the minority. The game has evolved since then, and I'm sure the majority of players have more fun being raid ready within 2 days than "working [their] way up slowly" and having it take weeks/months before they can enjoy themselves.

[Deleted]

Well, Mists 5 mans were the avenue of choice for getting raid ready for MSV :> At least, to everyone that did MSV normals at launch.



At lot of the bosses were tough too though. Stuff like Mechanar? Sure you needed a Warlock for most trash, but even the bosses had a lot going on.

I don't remember needing a Warlock for Mechanar, and I ran that place every day for the damn Sun Eater sword. Mechanar was one of the easiest ones imo. Hardest was definitely Shattered Halls or Shadow Labyrinth. Arcatraz was pretty brutal.

I think one of the "issues" that people had with the TBC heroics was that a normal solution to the difficult was just to throw more mages at it, so you could CC more mobs, and that led to a lot of classes/specs having issues finding groups. However, I did not encounter much/any of this as a Tank/DPS Warrior. I often played with a Paladin and Balance Druid, neither of which had anything like a mage's CC.

[Aquamonkey]

I don't remember needing a Warlock for Mechanar, and I ran that place every day for the damn Sun Eater sword. Mechanar was one of the easiest ones imo. Hardest was definitely Shattered Halls or Shadow Labyrinth. Arcatraz was pretty brutal.

I think one of the "issues" that people had with the TBC heroics was that a normal solution to the difficult was just to throw more mages at it, so you could CC more mobs, and that led to a lot of classes/specs having issues finding groups. However, I did not encounter much/any of this as a Tank/DPS Warrior. I often played with a Paladin and Balance Druid, neither of which had anything like a mage's CC.

Back when off-tanking/kiting was a normal alternative to CC.

[Blackmist]

No one wants to spend 3 hours in a dungeon.

A lot of people disagree with that statement. Let's rephrase it.

No one wants to spend 3 hours in a dungeon with a bunch of strangers that can't play for shit.

When I first hit level 70 back in TBC, I spend something like 5 hours in Shadow Labyrinths. 5 hours. With a bunch of guildmates. We were on TeamSpeak, we were having a laugh. We were failing miserably, but each pull we got a little more down. We never did get to kill Murmur that night, but it was fun.

My patience with random people who all want to blame everyone other than themselves for wipes, is rather less. I think I once spent all of 10 minutes trying to convince people to move away from the charge on that first boss in Grim Batol (without yelling at the healer for not stopping you getting one-shot). If all you get for trying to explain tactics is "FFS HEALS", then you're going to get out of there.

There are varying levels of skill and varying content to match. I lament the loss of hard heroics as much as anyone, but they just don't work in a post-LFD world. This is why you can't group for Challenge Modes. I'm not convinced that blasting through as fast as you can in enormous terrifying pulls was a step in the right direction, but it was at least a step. An admission that people's ideas of what heroics are, differs from player to player. One size does not fit all.

It would be nice to have a heroic be hard, and not randomly grouped for. Something that it's expected that raiders will do, but not be the base step before going to LFR. Where the queue just puts you in a level 90 version of a dungeon, while having a full group of 5 opens up the real heroic mode.

[Daedelus]

I see your 5 hour Shadow Labs and raise you a 6 hour BRD!

This is what they have tried to do with heroic scenarios, except even they are too easy with 3 friends and half-decent gear. Maybe newly dinged 90s (at whom they are aimed) makes them harder but the point is that as soon as Blizzard attempt to put some 'hard' content in that requires some communication that you can't use the group finder tool for, everyone cries about it and asks for a group finder to be added. They can't win.

Challenge modes are at the extreme end of the spectrum, not dissimilar to heroic raiding. Not everyone wants to do them but they fill an essential niche, without which a small but significant player base would quit and the game would become Hello Kitty Online which you can argue 95% of it is already. It's that 5% that makes it worth playing still.

[Deleted]

I'd vote for super hard dungeons dropping LFR. And I mean super hard, like Rift Tier 1/2 dungeons. BC difficulty.

[Daedelus]

I'm going to quote Tony Soprano* here - "You can't put shit back in the donkey"

Going back to TBC-style heroic dungeons is never going to happen, and frankly I hope they don't. I am a raider, that's all I really want to do. 5 mans is OK at the start of an expansion, and maybe doing one or two a week is OK, but that's it. I'm bored of them, they are a means to an end. That is just my opinion.

*RIP James Gandolfini. Best TV drama ever made.